Global server load balancing—sometimes referred to simply as global load balancing—is a technology that allows Internet traffic to be distributed among different data-centers located at different locations of the planet. This technology is highly efficient in avoiding local downtimes. There is usually a master load balancer which monitors the health and responsiveness of “slave” sites. Web requests—such as HTTP requests—to a web site or web server are, whenever possible, directed by the load balancer to the data center containing the target server or the request that is geographically closest to the requestor client.
The global load balancer can use domain name system (DNS) resolution to redirect the requests and other traffic between the globally distributed data centers. In this manner, web servers, web sites, and other such services (such as application servers) that are closer to the requestor can be used, which in turn reduces latency and request response times. Another such scheme to use data geographically closer to the requestor is a content delivery network (CDN), which is a third party that hosts static data for a web site in multiple locations, and requests for such hosted data are directed to the geographically nearest CDN node hosting the requested data.
However, conventional global server load balancers and content delivery networks direct traffic to existing servers. Such global load balancers and content delivery networks are not typically capable of instantiating new servers at new geographic locations to direct traffic to.